What Would You Do?

OK what would you do? First, allow me to set up the situation.

You are at home. You have just finished driving home from whatever it was you were doing, and traffic was hell. It is the early 90s, so cell phones are still the size of a brick and expensive - so you do not have one. But you do have....A PAGER! Remember those things? You would call a number, enter another phone number, then hang up. After a minute or so, the number you just entered is sent to someone's pager, where they see it and then call you back.

What the fuck was that all about? I mean, obviously I do not have a phone on me or else I would not have the pager. So how am I supposed to call you back?

Anyway, this is not important. What IS important is that you have a pager clipped to your pants. And you have just finished driving home from someplace, the traffic was hell, you probably drank an entire Big Gulp during the drive - and you REALLY have to take a piss. I mean really have to take a piss - BAD.

So you rush into the house, blitz the bathroom, shut the door, drop trow, sit (you may have to crap too) and then relax. Ahhhhhhh. The pressure is relieved. Oh yea and lets say you also poo. I can't remember. But I do remember taking that piss.

OK, so now you are all done. And so you stand up. And pull up your pants. And then you hear a noise. A strange noise. It sounds sort of like your pager coming unclipped from your pants and falling into the toilet. So you pause. do you even want to look? You think about it and then look.

And there, at the bottom of the toilet, in the yellow water with the log floating in it - is your pager.

OK now what do you do? You can just flush and hope the pager goes down the hole and is never seen again. But then again - you need that pager because chicks MIGHT beep you. And if a chick pages you, it is important and you MUST return that call. I mean, she should be paging you for ANY reason! You may not call her back and so she pages someone else and you end up being the master of your own domain.

But do you REALLY want to stick your hand in there? It is all gross and stuff in there. Not as gross as the figure to the left, but still pretty gross. However, I suppose given the choice of using the toilet snorkel OR dying of smoke inhalation I would........hope the fire department can revive my ass. They are usually pretty good at reviving people. OK Fine. I would use the snorkel. There. But while being rescued I would toss the evidence (the snorkel) into the fire so as to destroy it. Nobody would ever know.

But back to the original question. What would you do? Stick your hand in there to get the pager, or just pull the handle and hope everything vanishes? It is gross, but it is YOUR grossness. At least you know where it all came from. It is not like it is from some random stranger.

What did I do? I just went in after it. It was strange, because I thought about all this stuff I just posted, but yet went right in for the pager. It was only in the toilet for a second or two. Yet, my brain had time to consider the pros and cons of going in after it.

I suppose I could have flushed and then gone in after it. But I did not do this. I rolled up my sleeve and just did what had to be done. Quickly.

And the pager was still working. I was fairly amazed by this, as I was not expecting it to work. But there it was, working. For about 30 seconds. Then the display went blank. But I had some 91% rubbing alcohol in the bathroom. So quickly I took the battery out, opened the beeper case, and stuck the guts of it into a paper cup full of alcohol. I swished it around in the alcohol so as to displace any water in there AND also to make the beeper not gross anymore. Did I fail to mention where I pulled it out of?

After that I found a small box and put the beeper into that - then used the hair drier to get the thing dry. The 91% alcohol dried up pretty fast. Once the electronic parts were dry I put the case back together, inserted the battery - and it worked!

I never did get paged that day. I could have just flushed it and bought another beeper the next day. I suppose I did save $50 or however much those stupid things were selling for back then. Oh yea the beeper was also my watch and my alarm clock. So I would have probably been late to something the next day.

$50 Iguana Fun Bucks (no actual cash value) if you can tell me what the hell this thing to the left is, and exactly how someone is supposed to shit in it? I could probably figure out how to pee in it, but there would likely be some splash over. I understand these are common in Asia. Just another good reason China should never be allowed to become a superpower, and also could explain why Japan lost WWII.